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Rascality
of the oppressed
By MajiriOghene Bob
It is said that even a slave has in his hands the power to
free himself from his captivity. It is those chains, visible or not, that are
the instruments of his emancipation. This is one lesson I am keen that my
student in junior secondary school two imbibe. The smart young boy has in him
the seeds of leadership, though this is not the only reason why I should let him
know that as a leader, you have the power to challenge and be challenged in
return. There are other reasons but they are irrelevant here. However, as I
guide him through the political play called Julius Caesar, it struck me that most of those who
stand astride our Nigeria today like a colossus, were mere boys just like the
boy I have before me. And did they not say that a boy is the only raw material
with which we can manufacture a man?
Well, my boy grew tired of all of the schemes by Cassius to
get Brutus into scuttling Caesar’s ambition of being king of the Roman
Republic. He needed a break and I obliged him. His absence afforded me this
opportunity and I glanced through this newspaper lying around. The first thing
that struck me was the president’s independence speech wherein he
addressed the people of the Niger Delta fighting to be recognised as
first-class citizens of this country as ‘rascally’. Ordinarily, I
should have been upset at this man’s insensitive use of language but we
have become accustomed to his spontaneous ‘misyarnings’ and we do
not bother with him anymore. One other thing I am sure about is that he hardly
knows the meaning of the word ‘rascality’, and may have wanted to
express his admiration and respect for them with the first word that betrayed
his ‘owuish’ antecedents. Why else do you think he sent a jet for
presidents to bring Asari Dokubo to breakfast?
The reason why anyone would describe the struggle of the
people of the Niger Delta as an expression of rascality is that the person
hardly understands what the Niger Delta is. If there is any other place in the
world that has oil deposits the way the Niger Delta has, that place has to be
that tiny county in Mentone, Texas. Mentone county in the USA has a whooping
674 oil wells and 74 gas wells. It is said the place is so small that you could
drive past it in just twelve seconds without adjusting your speed. It had no
drinking water, no hospitals, no cemeteries and the annual rainfall in this
village is just around eight inches. Mentone has just about fifteen people with
nine square miles per person. Of the fifteen people who deign live in that
little village, the county judge is the brother to the county commissioner and
father-in-law to the sheriff: all of who represent the government. What I mean
to say here is that it is only because there is an ocean of crude oil below
this little community that the government seems to have put up a presence in
that desert. Nobody in his right frame of mind would live in a Mentone, Texas
that has so much wealth below it but boasts of only a trampoline for the kids.
This little American village is not different to the little
villages in Delta, Rivers, Bayelsa. It may just be that one of those little
boys who the president has referred to as ‘rascally’ may have grown
up under conditions of abject poverty in villages that should be as beautiful
as the Caribbean or the Bahamas. I hope you still remember that thing that was
taught to us in psychology 101 classes, that all of what a man is now, is an accumulation
of the sociological, cultural and religious experiences he has had between ages
zero to twelve. So, if a boy who has grown in an environment that has suffered
neglect and exploitation for most of the formative periods of his life wakes up
one morning to caress an AK-47 like a toy and chuck grenades like Frisbees, do
not see him as a rascal. I’d rather you see him as someone who merely
wishes to resort to the sort of expression an oppressed man or woman would in a
circumference that pays little heed to peaceful and reasonable parley. The
young man has had enough and is unwilling to be ridden roughshod a minute more.
A great many of you sometimes known as ‘rascals’ know it that those
who make change impossible, usually are the people who prepare the river beds
for anarchy to grow. The man who wrote the book that I study with the boy above
made it clear that those who would start a great fire usually begin it with
weak straws. The basic things that were not there when these men grew up as
boys is what I think is responsible for the vigour and the determination that
the president has analysed badly as ‘rascality’. The Mentonians of
Texas are content with abandoning their homelands for greener fields not
because they cannot challenge their government but because there seem to be
arrangements already in place to absorb the frustrations involved in abandoning
your home.
The way it is now, I do not think the people of the
Niger-Delta are merely being ‘rascally’ because they want to be
provided food and water. This has gone beyond that. If we study this
‘rascality’ dispassionately, we will find out that this is a subtle
expression of love for a land that they will never abandon like the people of
Mentone, USA. It is a challenge and a clear message to the status quo ante,
that it does not seem right that the people who feed this country are not there
at the helm of affairs, exercising a measure of control. It is also another way
of telling those who think about the management of this country as their
birthright to adjust this thinking. Nigeria should belong to us all. The
interpretation that should be given the so-called ‘rascality’ of
the young people of the Niger-Delta is that these are an oppressed people who
just want a level playing field in the determination of the future of their
beloved country.
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